After losing several high profile employees to AMD, Apple is now beginning to hire engineers back from the GPU giant to help develop proprietary hardware.

Apple has been losing some high profile experts to GPU and CPU manufacturer AMD. Apple’s lead chip designer, director of graphics architecture and VP of iPhone engineering have all left the company to pursue employment with AMD, and Wayne Meretsky, who is known for his work on the Mac, is currently AMD’s VP of Software Development. However, Apple is finally beginning to take some talent back from AMD.

New Apple employees are headed for the sunshine state

According to a number of job listings and LinkedIn profiles, Apple has snagged several former AMD graphics engineers for its Orlando Design Center. Among the new employees are a graphics architect, hardware engineer and site managers for the GPU divisions at both the Design Center and Apple’s Cupertino headquarters. The Design Center is the brand new place where Apple is rumored to be developing custom chips. This news comes only a month after Apple sought half a dozen engineers to begin development of custom CPU and mobile graphics hardware.

The new hires indicate that Apple is keen to accelerate the process of supplying their computers with custom parts, as opposed to using off the shelf components as many rivals do. The iPhone 4 debuted Apple’s first in-house “system on a chip”, the A4; and, most recently, the iPhone 5 marked Apple’s first in-house custom CPU, the A6 chip.